PROBABLY THE OLDEST FEEDER IN TEXAS, Page #0385

not think enough of it to even
go to see it. He was one of the number who went from LaGrange at Sam Houston's
call to hold Gonzales from the invading Mexican army, but there were not enough
Texans to accomplish this task, so General Houston

detailed him and a few others to keep the women and children ahead of
the Mexican army.

I was born in Fayette County in 1849. Father bought a fine tract of land on the
prairie on the east side of the Colorado River, fourteen miles above Columbus,
and moved there in 1852, and when I was twenty-one years old he turned his stock
and farm over to me.

In 1871 I made a trip up the trail to Newton, Kansas, with Barnes &
Seymour. We had several hundred old wild steers in the herd that were from four
to fifteen years old, which had been raised in the brush on the Sandies, and
they stampeded frequently, giving us a world of trouble. So right there I gained
a lot of experience in handling stampeded cattle that has been worth a great
deal to me in working with cattle in the years that followed. We started this
herd about the 10th of May and reached Newton the 12th of August. After we
passed Fayette County there were but few settlements, and when we got up near
Red River we found it to be a wild country. Almost every man we met carried two
six-shooters and a Winchester for protection. When we passed through the Indian
Territory we had no trouble with the Indians, but they attempted to stampede our
herd several times. Two or three miles off the trail there were thousands of
buffalo, all the way